and, should america be angry with the turks for their betrayal?

the turks have actually been very compliant allies, and they had to be, because they were all of a sudden back to where they were in the fourteenth century, and under imminent threat of russian invasion of the dardanelles. there was a war in greece over this, right after world war two. without western support, turkey would have certainly become a soviet socialist republic. it was the first major proxy conflict of the cold war.

and, since then, turkey has been compliant because they've been reliant. i've gone through great lengths here to stress turkey's role as a european power, and one half of the legacy of the byzantine empire - the geographic half, if not the cultural half. hey, listen - the turkish emperors themselves were well aware of this, and picked up where the romans left off, launching multiple invasions of rome to try and unite the empire.

historical reality is that if the turks had succeeded in conquering italy, they would have almost certainly moved their capital to rome, and what i'm saying here would be mainstream history, although it's not particularly obscure, as it is.

the turks demonstrated every inclination that they wanted to be an important part of the western alliance, from the embrace of secularism to the construction of important nato military facilities. they've fought and died in western wars.

but, now, we see what america has done - and this is obama's fault - to spit in the face of this willing and compliant ally, in backing extremists funded by the saudi theocracy to redraw the maps in the middle east, in ways that put the very premise of turkish civilization under existential threat. much of the fighting in the syrian war was between turkish-backed groups and saudi-backed groups for control over who gets to recreate syria in their image, in the then-perceived vacuum of russian power, with the americans overwhelmingly supporting the saudi-backed groups, which convincingly defeated the turkish-backed groups, before the russians came in and beat the saudi-backed groups. the turks have been fighting a proxy war against deep american interests the whole time! it may have taken them a few years to understand this, as no doubt nobody told them. so, some allies. america has refused to take these concerns seriously, to the point that it has essentially been treating turkey like an adversary - just another bunch of barbarians to divide and set at each other.

erdogan is dumb as a plank, but he's right about this: this is not the behaviour of an ally. it is the behaviour of an imperial force set on setting everybody against each other. the turks do not have real friends or serious allies in washington.

to put it another way, turkey may have demonstrated enthusiastic willingness to be in the empire, but the empire has refused to consolidate turkey within it, instead seeing them as outsiders - barbarians with weird customs that need to be kept in a state of inter-warfare to prevent them from challenging american interests. america would be just as happy to see turkey collapse into a set of buffer states.

no, do not blame turkey. this is america's fault.

and, it's america's addiction to oil's fault.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.